A Hawk's Gaze
by bleak reality
Summary: (Side story to The Wrong Target) Gavin's unplugging and an explanation of Morpheus' condition.


Important Note:

This story operates in the same alternate universe as my WIPs, The Wrong Target and Born of Fire. It's set after the first movie, and takes nothing whatsoever from Reloaded or Revolutions. This is essentially a side story to TWT, and explains a little of Gavin's history and what happened to Morpheus. Told from Neo's POV. 

Now I'll shut up and let you read.

Honestly, you'd think we'd have figured things out by now. Nothing's ever easy. Nothing is ever - _ever_ - simple.

Trinity had contacted him. Another kid, another one like all the others I fell for. The quiet ones. The ones that don't seem much on the outside, but when I'm up in the bell tower and I see them alone, silent and still, they glow in the green.

Gavin. The name he had chosen. A name that suits his white blond hair and the way he can always tell when I'm watching. Hawk.

And now the kid's causing a little . . . complication . . . that we could do without. He was flickering before, when he first got in the car. Tod shot him in the leg. An Agent couldn't run with a wound like that, so now the kid's safe. Or as safe as someone can be when they're curled up in the back of a speeding car having their thigh bandaged with strips torn from the seat covers.

Green eyes watch me, wide and scared. Trinity drives like she's on rails, but even so he's being jolted around.

This will be a hasty unplugging. I'm talking him through it now, asking him what he wants. Morpheus is waiting to be jacked in at the service station, Tod's giving him the run down on what's just happened. Very quietly I can hear the captain's voice -

"You'll have to leave the target behind."

"Like hell," I snap in Tod's direction. Without my asking he relays the message. Morpheus doesn't need to question how I heard.

"The captain'll come in," Tod says once he's shut the phone. "But we have to get the kid out of this bloody place in less than ten minutes."

Wide green eyes.

"Gavin, are you sure about this?"

He reaches for my hand, and his own blood smears over his skin. He's not even free yet and he's already had his first blood. "Neo. I don't want to live when I'm not living truth."

Spoken like a zealot. I haven't started preaching yet. "Sure?"

"We're there guys," Trinity turns a corner and slots us into a parking space. Like a glove.

Gavin squeezes my hand before Tod lifts him out of the car.

I've got to stop falling for these quiet ones. They always get hurt so quickly.

Red pill. No questions asked. The kid looks over Morpheus' shoulder to me as he swallows, keeps his eyes on me as Trinity begins to connect the ECG spots. The faith I see there is worrying.

And it's then, at the time when he's most vulnerable, in transition from one world to the next, that I hear what I always wish I never have to.

Ripples. Stones thrown into the order that send scatters of minor chaos throughout everything.

Agents.

"Morpheus," I interrupt. Gavin is almost beyond this, throwing his head back and writhing in the chair. We've done this messily; it will hurt him.

The captain glances at me. I don't need to explain what I've heard. "How long?" he asks.

"Three minutes max."

"We'll make it."

__

By the seat of Trin's vinyl pants.

Then it's a tangle of wires, voices, code and commands. Before the kid's form has fully unravelled, Tank has our exit open.

Tod lifts the phone. I can hear the sing of their code; they're right outside the hotel. Trinity follows orders and makes it to relative safety.

I've just lifted the black plastic when the door splinters.

And my first thought is; Mouse died in this room. So will Morpheus.

Bullets spray like horizontal rain, it's all I can do to throw up my hand and avert their path. My captain looks over to me, mirror shades fallen aside. Behind him I see Jones step neatly through the rubble of wood and plaster, aiming straight for the one without defences.

If Tank can't fly to pick up Gavin, he'll drown. But the risk of moving the ship while the two of us are still jacked in is far too great. I know he won't attempt it.

If I don't get us out _now_ we'll lose two lives tonight.

__

Crack! The sound snaps the world in two. I move, but not fast enough. Never quite fast enough. Blood and leather are already smearing my hands when I catch him, his head is already tilted back like the kid's when he collapses into my arms.

Oh captain, my captain.

Jones looks squarely at me in that moment of silence. I know that in some world or another, an ECG is flatlining.

"You failed Anderson."

I don't reply. There's nothing to say and no time in which to say it.

Morpheus' eyes are blank. I bow my head over him, hold him closer, and fly straight up.

Erupting into the sky, I think I might be screaming. But I can't tell. All that registers is a harsh sound like wind tearing at my ears, and the horrible slickness of blood on leather I'm all too familiar with.

__

And for a very very long time, that's it.

White. Kneeling with the man who freed me in my arms. No knowledge of how we reached here.

A faint memory of a voice, _"This, is the construct. It's our, loading program."_

"Morpheus," I whisper. "Why didn't you make it?"

"Neo?"

Suddenly, a shadow in the emptiness. A woman, carrying something like an oversized first aid kit.

"Who are you?"

"Let me help him Neo, he's only barely alive."

"What?"

"Just sit back a moment."

Clink of instruments together. Differing textures of white, cotton and bandages contrasting with black leather and dried blood. I give up on understanding and let her work.

We're in the construct. It's been altered from the nothing to something like a hospital, with the man lying as if dead between white sheets.

"We're looking after you back on the ship," The woman reassures me. "You're on an IV, Tank says we should leave you jacked in until Morpheus wakes up."

I know that should be something of importance to me, but for some reason the concept of my mind being separate from my body doesn't click into place. I may have understood it once, but I seem to have forgotten.

She takes my hand gently, mistaking my confusion for concern for the man in the bed.

"He'll be alright Neo. He always had the best control over his reality of all of us. If he wants to make it I believe he will."

But I can't fully grasp what she's saying. I know that this woman is my reason for life but I can't remember _why_.

"Key's coming on shift now, so I have to go. See you soon."

And I wish I could erase that unspeakable sadness from her blue eyes. But I can't remember how.

There's no time in here. No sun. But then I seem to remember there's never been a sun. It may have been days or hours since that woman was here, and now the man in the bed has woken up.

The woman with the blue eyes takes me in to him. She says he asked for me.

"Neo," he smiles.

"Morpheus."

__

Flying. Flying so fast that light becomes streaks etched into retina and the blood on my hands dries. Everything that may have once been warm is frozen. Wind tears, a barrier between one world and the next rips into shreds and for an instant I'm back in my own skin, aching like there's nothing left in me that's solid. Then I shut down, and I'm somewhere else, in some place with no light or heat or colour, kneeling and holding the remnants of another mind tight and close to me so he won't die.

Because I can't let him die. I've given my life for his once before, why not again?

And the memory slams back into me.

"I saved you."

"Again," his voice, with a depth that always lets me know there's stability somewhere in my life. There's that lilt of amusement.

"You've both been in here for just over three days," Trinity takes a seat in one plastic chair near the bed. I follow her.

"It seems like longer," Morpheus says.

"There is no time," she almost falters for an instant, but recovers, "where there are no physical boundaries to restrain the mind."

I draw a blank. Morpheus frowns.

Trinity breathes in, and looks flatly at our captain. "Your body is dead, Morpheus."

"How?" I demand.

"You saved his mind Neo, but there was enough time of lost contact between the Matrix and the Real for his body to . . . stop."

"The body cannot live without the mind," he whispers it, looking down at his knees under the white sheet.

"Morpheus?" he looks up at me, but does not speak. Once again there is nothing to say.

Gavin is no less quiet in the Real than he was in his old life. Like a small pale ghost he hovers in small out of the way corners, freezing like a wild animal in the headlights of a car when he feels me looking at him. Key keeps an eye on him, making sure he's kept busy and productive. But she only serves to hold off the inevitable.

"Gavin."

A sharp inhalation and a quick turn. He almost knocks over his cup.

I attempt a smile. "If I didn't know better I'd think you've been avoiding me."

He doesn't speak.

"What are you afraid of?"

"It's my fault." His voice is tiny.

"What is?"

"The captain. And you. You got hurt because of me."

"No one's blaming you for that. We're in a war," since when did my voice get so cold? "There are casualties."

"But - "

"Come here."

He sets down the tin mug and obeys. He's seventeen, but he somehow looks so much younger. He stares up at me, his green eyes seeming wider because of his lack of hair and the paleness of his skin.

"If you blame yourself for every accident, injury and death on this ship, you'll have killed yourself in a month. There's a _reason_ I chose you. There's a reason you have to stay with us."

His mouth opens, but he can't bring himself to ask me what I don't say. Thankfully. I can't explain why I fall for the quiet ones.

"Here," I pull something from my belt, a ragged cap that someone once gave to me.

__

From one newbie to another.

I hand it to him almost awkwardly. "For until your hair grows."

Thin bony hands wrap themselves around the cloth. Then he takes me completely by surprise and hugs me, his head down and his eyes shut. "I'm so sorry Neo," he murmurs.

I don't protest this time. Because I think I'm sorry for much the same reasons.

Well that came out slightly weirder than expected. ::Shrugs:: it's a thing I'm doing more often than I mean to.


End file.
